Guideline 4: Gradually advancing language practices, analytical skills, and conceptual understandings
Materials gradually advance the level of language practices, analytical skills, and conceptual understandings as a unit progresses.
Specifications for Guideline 4
Specification 4A
Texts are rarely, if ever, simplified so that students have the opportunity to grapple with grade-level texts and successfully engage with them to build college- and career-readiness. Teachers can provide additional high-quality, relevant texts for context building up to the main reading.
Specification 4B
Materials apply text engineering (chunking a text in meaningful units, inserting headings, inserting questions) to alert students to key queries to consider before moving on in the text.
Specification 4C
Materials help teachers indicate what is essential to understand and why it is essential; materials should alert students to connections between texts and concepts.
Specification 4D
Instead of replacing a word with a simpler word, student texts provide students with reading strategies (e.g. determining words in context) or include parentheses with explanations, definitions, or more details.
Guideline 5: Learn language through prolonged exposure
Materials reflect the understanding that students learn language through prolonged exposure along with opportunities to negotiate content and ideas in the target language, with scaffolds and supports for further development as needed.
Specifications for Guideline 5
Specification 5A
Curriculum spirals concepts, skills, and language throughout to give students consistent exposure and multiple opportunities to learn them over time.
Specification 5B
Curriculum spirals concepts, skills, and language throughout with increasing sophistication, precision, and/or complexity.
Specification 5C
Materials should contain scaffolds (e.g. visual organizers, sentence frames/starters, hands-on materials, role-plays) to support students' developing academic reasoning skills.
Guideline 6: Increasing understanding of appropriately complex texts
Materials provide scaffolds and create tasks that lead students to build an increased understanding of complex grade-level text over time.
Specifications for Guideline 6
Specification 6A
Materials offer opportunities for students to engage in multiple close readings of complex texts to promote deep understanding of texts' themes, concepts, structure, etc.
Guideline 7: Writing activities build a nexus of college- and career-ready skills
Writing activities explicitly and cumulatively build a nexus of college- and career-ready skills (e.g. analysis of texts, gathering evidence, making and supporting claims) as the curriculum progresses.
Specifications for Guideline 7
Specification 7A
Materials should include opportunities for the development of research skills, and teacher guidance should demonstrate how to build these skills into the material and lead this endeavor in a collaborative manner before students are required to research independently.
Specification 7B
Teachers guide students to revise and then edit their writing through a process that focuses on specific issues each time rather than trying to address all content and editing issues simultaneously.
Specification 7C
Units include pair or group conversation activities that help students practice their abilities to develop and challenge ideas using evidence-based reasoning, allowing them to engage with ideas and engage with ELA practices (inferring meaning from texts, making arguments, supporting claims with text evidence, etc.) before writing extensively about them.
